AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I came here to talk to Hammerhead, yeah,” I say noncommittally.
He chuckles. “That man used to be the meanest son of a bitch in Arizona. I’ll be honest, the guy even made me nervous,” he says. “But… times have changed.”
“Time always changes things.”
“Usually not that bad though.”
I shrug. “He’s not so far gone he can’t come back from it.”
Ratchet arches an eyebrow at me. “Are we talkin’ about the same guy here? Big? Dopey looking? Has gotten really flabby and developed a nasty meth habit?”
“What do you want, Ratchet?”
“I want the business you’re doing with the Howlers,” he tells me. “I want to be your new keeper of the pipeline.”
“And why would we do that?”
“Because Hammerhead’s become an unreliable junkie,” he says. “Because you’re throwing money at him and your territory has only gotten… smaller. A lot smaller.”
He gives me a menacing grin, letting me know he’s taken large chunks of the city away from the Howlers. As if I didn’t already know that on my own. Ratchet is an arrogant and annoying prick but he’s a smart leader and he’s efficient. He has the balls to come right up to me and challenge me like this, which means he’s not afraid of the Kings. The man seems to want to openly provoke me into doing something reckless. I don’t know what he’s playing at, but I don’t like it.
“If you’re taking the city back and taking over the distro corridor, why would you need us?” I point out. “Why not just run the whole territory on your own?”
He gives me a smirk. “You know why. You still control the supply in this area. They’re loyal—trust me, I’ve tried to get them to stab you in the back,” he says. “But no joy. They will only work with the Kings. Which means, if I want a call up to the big leagues, I need to work with the Kings. So it seems to me we’re at an impasse. You need those lines open, and I’ve got the territory. We could make a great team.”
There it is. And I can already figure out what he’s really going for: he wants to tie a rope around the Kings and bring us down with him. We’d never recover if we started plunging our hands into the filth like he does. And then he’d use that as leverage over us to slowly cannibalize us from within, trying to push us out of our home.
Yeah, fat fucking chance. Not as long as I’m alive.
I purse my lips and look off into the distance, folding my arms over my chest. It’s not surprising he tried to get the suppliers in the area to turn on me. The fact that they refused him makes me feel better about the situation down here. Not even the instability of Hammerhead and the Howlers has shaken their loyalty to the Kings. And that’s a good thing. That gives me a few options to work with.
“Once I control all of Phoenix, we’ll be branching out,” Ratchet adds. “We’ll own the entire southwest eventually.”
“Careful that you don’t let your reach exceed your grasp,” I reply.
“Trust me, I’ve got a plan.”
“Uh-huh,” I say.
“The Howlers are a sinking ship, bro. They’re making the Titanic look like a pleasure cruise,” he says. “You sure you want to tie your business to them? To Hammerhead?”
“We’re considering a few things,” I tell him.
“Yeah? Such as?”
“The idea of patching over the Howlers and setting up a chapter down here has been floated,” I offer.
It’s a lie. The idea just occurred to me but putting it out there like that is worth it just for the look I see on Ratchet’s face. He pales a bit and licks his lips nervously. The idea of running the Howlers to extinction is one thing. The idea of having a full Kings charter down here is something else entirely. He knows he can’t stand up against us and that all the gains he made at Hammerhead’s expense could be lost in the blink of an eye. The prospect of a bloody turf war looms between us, and I can see that for all his shadowy manipulations, he doesn’t have the stomach for an all-out conflict. Especially when he knows he’ll lose.
He clears his throat and tries to regain his swagger. “Listen, if you want to throw out the trash and take us on as a partner, we’ll cut you a sweet deal. We already have the distro network in place, and we can all make a lot of money.”
“Or we can get rid of all of you and keep all the money for ourselves,” I counter.
He shrugs. “I’ll tell you now, we won’t just roll over. You’re in for a fight if you try to set up a chapter here,” he insists. “Why waste the lives and money when we can work together? When we can all make a lot of cash. The pie’s big enough for us all to have a big, fat slice.”
He’s not wrong. And even though the idea of setting up a chapter here seems legit to me, I don’t know that Old Grim will go for it. It costs a lot to establish a chapter, plus you need to have men you can trust in place. It would thin out Vegas’ ranks if we had to send some of the men we have to set up camp here. But it’s a good bargaining tool to use against Ratchet.
“Tell you what, I’ll take it back to our table and we’ll talk about it,” I say.
